Wood’s Creek to Bullfrog Lake over Glen Pass

Mileage: 13.3 miles (21.4 km), total 185.2 miles (298.1 km)

The day started off very cold and misty and it rained throughout much of the night. We packed up and had breakfast and I think everyone was glad to leave Wood’s Creek behind given the night before.

We climbed up gradually from Wood’s Creek but didn’t get too far. It started to hail quite strongly so we took some shelter under some trees and tried to squeeze out some dry space. We passed a couple of hikers we had been leap frogging with since VVR and one of them told us he wouldn’t be surprised if there was snow ahead.

Sure enough, it didn’t take long before the weather worsened so we put our tents up to take some time out of the weather.  The temperature dropped dramatically and with the extended rain of the past few days, it was proving difficult to keep our gear dry. The inside of our tents became condensation pits and even with the storm doors open it was difficult to prevent this. We spent a few hours here in the sleeping bags as the temperature hit freezing.

Eventually the weather lessened up a little and we headed on as otherwise we would not have enough time to get up and over Glen Pass. We headed up and the weather continued to ease a little as we continued to climb and reached Rae Lakes.

Ben was feeling a bit unwell by this point so we stopped a few times but had to keep going up the pass. The section around Rae Lakes was nice and the weather had eased up but we knew we had Glen Pass ahead of us so kept going.

The temperature really dropped as we headed up the Pass and climbed away from Rae Lakes. The footing on the switchbacks was really slippery. It is not for nothing that I’m known for stacking it at every opportunity and I really had to watch where I was putting my feet and avoiding slipping along the steep switchbacks. We had mailed our microspikes back to LA from Tuolumne and the grip on our shoes was pretty worn after close to 300km on the JMT.

We climbed up higher and tried to keep a good pace so we could get up and over the Glen Pass and down the other side. We passed hardly anyone on the way up what is usually a very crowded trail.

Eventually, we reached the top of Glen Pass which had been a tough climb to do in difficult weather. It is certainly not conditions we are used to and it is impossible to train for this weather living in Western Australia. It was super cold at the top and there was very little view with the low cloud on top of the pass.

We met a couple of hikers coming up the other side of Glen Pass and stopped to talk to them. They mentioned that there was bad weather and snow coming in the next few days and that Forrester Pass and Whitney would be pretty tricky in such conditions without microspikes.

We headed down the pass and it was super slippy on the way down the switchbacks so it took us a fair amount of time to get down. We passed a few frozen lakes on the way down which showed how cold it was.

We had talked that day about heading off the JMT at Kearsarge. We were both concerned about the upcoming weather and felt that we were lacking some of the equipment such as traction devices to safely climb the switchbacks of Forrester and Whitney.

We thought it was better to be safe than have an accident which could have been prevented by taking the sensible route which was heading off the JMT at Kearsarge. We were also conscious that this was effectively the last real point to get off the JMT and, given we knew we were heading in to bad weather, took the sensible decision and headed towards Kearsarge.

We reached Bullfrog Lake and decided to camp there (we later realised it is a no camping spot). The Lake is at the bottom of Kearsarge and several nearby mountains which makes it an ideal spot for temperatures to plummet as all the cold air sinks down on three sides into the area around the lake.

The temperature got cold very quickly so we gathered water from the lake and cooked dinner. It was then time to hit the sleeping bags and get in from the cold. We were looking forward to a motel room the next day in Independence and getting warm and dry after the past few days.